A television producer of such hilarious, intelligent satire as Not the Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image, and Blackadder, John Lloyd finds inspiration in the philosophy of William James on the three most important things in life: "The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." The publisher of The Beatles, Michael Palin, and Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, John Mitchinson is more inclined toward Einstein: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." The pair of them have written this dictionary of the dead, this encyclopedia of the embalmed. Ludicrous in scope, whimsical in its arrangement, it presents pithy and provocative biographies of the no-longer-living, from the famous to the undeservedly and—until now—permanently obscure. From the inventor of the stove to a cross-dressing, bear-baiting female gangster, they all finally receive the epitaphs they truly deserve, and you will discover why Freud had a lifelong fear of trains, the one thing that really made Isaac Newton laugh, and how Catherine the Great really died (no horse was involved).